The final judgments are in and The Tournament of Books winner has been crowned. It was a close match, 11-6, and my vote ended up going to the winner. Go check it out. (And read both of these books, they’re great.)
And the Winner Is…
Digging into the 2013 IMPAC Longlist
The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award has unveiled its massive 2013 longlist. Recall that libraries around the world can nominate books for the prize, and these nominations, taken together, comprise the longlist. This year there are 154 novels on the list, nominated by 120 libraries in 44 countries. All of the books must have been published in English in 2011 (including translations).
Because of the award’s global reach and egalitarian process, it’s always interesting to dig deeper into the longlist. Taken as a whole, the literary tendencies of various countries become evident, and a few titles recur again and again, revealing which books have made a global impact on readers.
Overall favorites: books that were nominated by at least seven libraries.
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (15 libraries representing Australia, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, England, Germany, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United States)
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach (9 libraries representing Belgium and the United States)
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt (9 libraries representing Canada, Ireland, and the United States)
The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht (9 libraries representing Austria, Ireland, Norway, and the United States)
The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje (7 libraries representing Belgium, Canada, and the United States)
The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst (7 libraries representing Belgium, the Czech Republic, England, Greece, New Zealand, Russia, and the United States)
You can also look at the list and see which books are favorites in different countries. Several books were nominated by multiple libraries in the same country. Here’s a few:
In Canada, Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
In Australia, Autumn Laing by Alex Miller
In New Zealand, The Conductor by Sarah Quigley
In the Netherlands, Julia by Otto de Kat, The Book of Doubt by Tessa de Loo, and Caesarion by Tommy Wieringa
There were also several countries with only one library nominating just one or two books. Here are a few of those:
From Iceland, The Map of Time by Félix J. Palma
From India, The Sly Company of People Who Care by Rahul Bhattacharya
From Jamaica, The Goat Woman of Largo Bay by Gillian Royes
From Mexico, My Two Worlds by Sergio Chejfec
From Sweden, The Dewey Decimal System by Nathan Larson
Whitbread finalists
Sometimes it seems like all there is to write about is book awards. The National Book Awards are handed out, but wait, here are the Whitbread finalists. The Whitbread, Britain’s second most prestigious prize after the Booker, is, it seems to me, at a disadvantage. Since the Whitbread comes out only a couple of months after the Booker, the selections are compared in the press. If the Whitbread too closely mirrors the Booker, it loses some of its punch, but if the judges pick a shortlist with no overlap with the Booker, the Whitbread is criticized for being too obscure. This year, the only overlap with the Booker is that they have both shortlisted Ali Smith’s The Accidental. As was much remarked when the Booker list was announced, many well-known authors have books out this year: Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith and Julian Barnes, among others. None of those made the Whitbread list, a fact that seems likely to have prompted head judge Philippa Gregory’s defensive sounding remark in the Guardian: “Our shortlist may confuse the book trade. We are not saying these are the only good books. They are books which happened to resonate powerfully with the judges of the moment.” The list does include two notable names: Salman Rushdie for Shalimar the Clown and Nick Hornby for A Long Way Down. Rounding out the fiction list is Cotton by Christopher Wilson (which, since it is going by a different title in England, has been much misrepresented in the press, as the Literary Saloon points out.) For the finalists in all the categories, visit the Whitbread site.
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2013 National Book Award Shortlists Released
The contenders for the 2013 National Book Award were pared down to a five nominees in each category today. Winners will be announced in New York City on November 20.
Fans of Jhumpa Lahiri will be excited to know that after missing out on yesterday’s Man Booker Prize, the Lowland author is still squarely in the running for the National Book Award. Of course, in order to attain the honor she’s going to have to beat out former Millions Top Ten member George Saunders and Millions favorite Rachel Kushner – as well as previous NBA winner Thomas Pynchon. On the nonfiction list, Millions readers should recognize George Packer’s The Unwinding, which Chris Barsanti called an “awe-inspiring X-Ray of the modern American soul.”
At the final awards ceremony on November 20, each finalist will receive $1,000, and each winner will receive an additional $10,000. Additional awards will also be goven to E.L. Doctorow and Maya Angelou, who will be receiving the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the Literarian Award for Outstanding Contribution to the American Literary Community, respectively. The National Book Foundation has also announced that free e-books will be released containing excerpts from each of the works on the shortlist. (We’ll have more on that when it’s available.) Edit: The new e-books are now available for the Fiction Finalists, Nonfiction Finalists, Poetry Finalists, and Young People’s Literature Finalists. (E-books for other platforms are available here.)
Here’s a list of the finalists in all four categories with bonus links and excerpts where available:
Fiction:
The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner (Millions review, Millions interview)
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (excerpt)
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (excerpt)
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon (first page, excerpt)
Tenth of December by George Saunders (Millions review)
Nonfiction:
Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore (review)
Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer (Millions review)
The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832 by Alan Taylor (review)
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright (review, excerpt)
Poetry:
Metaphysical Dog by Frank Bidart (review)
Stay, Illusion by Lucie Brock-Broido (review)
The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka (excerpt)
Black Aperture by Matt Rasmussen
Incarnadine by Mary Szybist (review)
Young People’s Literature:
The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp by Kathi Appelt (review)
The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata (review)
Far Far Away by Tom McNeal
Picture Me Gone by Meg Rosoff
Boxers and Saints by Gene Luen Yang (review)
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Booker Shortlist Has Big Names But No Mitchell
Well-known established writers like Peter Carey and Andrea Levy and up and coming author Tom McCarthy made the 2010 Booker shortlist, while David Mitchell, probably the best-known name on the longlist, failed to make the cut. The longlist was offered here with some excerpts a month ago, but since you might not have gotten around to them then, we’ll offer the same with the shortlist below.
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey (excerpt)
Room by Emma Donoghue (excerpt)
In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut (excerpt)
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
The Long Song by Andrea Levy (excerpt)
C by Tom McCarthy
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